sugar beet

[Sags_Deer]

sorry another post!! now i thought sugar beet was good to put on weight but my feed lady has said it is a fibre feed more. does anyone agree or have comments please. I dont normally feed it but have just started giving it to my old mare along with build up cubes it.


pm me narrow dressage saddle, synthetic 15 1/2" pony saddle, masta under rug 6'6"

 

[AmyMay]

I don't feed sugarbeet to my horse because it makes her fat!

 

[the watcher]

it will certainly make the cubes more palatable and if regular sugar beet will add some condition

 

[TGM]

I think the subject of whether foods are 'fattening' can be very confusing! Most foods will put weight on if enough of it is fed!

But some foods are more dense in calories than others - ie will contain more calories per kg fed. Sugar beet probably is middle range when it comes to being dense in calories, with something like straw being at the bottom end and oil being at the top end. Conditioning cubes are usually rich in oil, which is why they are quite dense in calories and therefore regarded as 'fattening'.

But as others have said you have to consider palatability as well - it is not good having a calorie-rich food if the horse doesn't eat it. So sometimes adding a succulent food like sugarbeet can encourage the faddy feeder to ingest more calories.

 

[Magicmillbrook]

Sugare beet used to be more fattening than it is now. Modern extraction techniques get nearly all the sugar out of the beet leaving mainly fibre as the by product. Bear in mind however that some feed companies add mollasses back into the pellets.

Sugar beet is supposed to be a very digestible form of fibre helping to keep ponies toasty and wam in the winter - this may be useful if yours looses condition.

I have an older, moody TB x mare who tends to loose condition in the winter but gets fizzy if fed too much. She mainly has plenty of hay/haylage. For breakfast and tea she has simple systems lucerne nuts, unmollased sugar beet with ruff stuff or lucy stalks (very high fibre low food value chaffs). I also use their natural feed balancer. Last year she maintained condition, looked fabulous and we had no moods or fizziness.

At ILPH they don't use any hard feeds if they can help it, they just stick to good forages. Only a handfull of the 140 odd horses at their Norfolk yard have hard feed at all.